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Wal-Smart

I have not yet read the book Wal-Smart that John Moore discusses in his recent post called The DNA of Wal-Mart but can say that I've read other books that outline both the good and bad points of the Wal-Mart strategy.

The bottom-line is that many (all) of the things that Wal-Mart is coming under fire for today are only visible because they have become the employer of over 1,000,000 people.

If any of these same tactics were employed by a local business with 1-5, even 100 stores they would not be seen as negatives but rather extremely good, smart business.

The challenge that any business has is that when it gets to be a certain size the "rules" change - no different than IBM or Microsoft. The problem is that for a business to become truly great it needs to have some key traits burned into its DNA and that DNA is hard to change once the "rules" change.

Wanting to "put a PC on everyone's desk and own the operating system" is considered bravado by an excited company founder when the company is growing and few people understand what a PC is.

Burn that DNA into the company, work hard, add in a little luck and that same quote 20 years later when Microsoft really did own 95%+ of the PC market became the focus of anti-trust violations.

Wal-Mart is feeling similar things today that many great companies in the past have also felt. Don't let the negativity that dominates the news today cloud your judgement and keep you from taking away the truly great ideas that Wal-Mart brings to the table.

Posted by David Brown on February 21, 2007 07:28 AM|Permalink

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